Do I Look Suspicious to You? Livable Streets Starts with Equal Access to Streets
Mikey, Jonathan, and George were waiting for a friend just a few feet from the corner of Ave. 50 and York Blvd. in Highland Park when a police car pulled up. Two cops got out and told them to turn around, spread their legs, and put their hands behind their backs.
March 29, 2012
What Lies Beneath: Using Community Gardens to Recapture Shared Culture
We are most sad about being unable to pass on our agricultural traditions to our children, said an older gentleman in Spanish.
March 27, 2012
Go Frack Yourself, Part II: PXP Blames Cracked Home Foundations on Pesky Earthquake Faults
(Part 1 of the series is here.)
March 23, 2012
Has Ball, Needs Field: A Parking Lot Becomes a Fútbol Field for an Afternoon
RIDING BACK FROM an interview at a school garden off King Blvd., I came across a dozen guys engaged in a serious game of fútbol in a Coliseum parking lot. Curious, I plopped myself down next to Oscar Villatoro, a sweet guy in glasses who was sitting out the game because of a bum knee.
March 22, 2012
Transforming Transit-Oriented Spaces into Theatrical Happenings: A conversation with the Artistic Director of the Watts Village Theater Company
YOU CAN SEE GOATS from the Blue Line, Guillermo Avilés-Rodríguez, Artistic Director of the Watts Village Theater Company (WVTC), told me excitedly.
March 20, 2012
Rock Me Like A Hurricane. Or a Tornado. Or an Impending Ice Age: the carbon cost of the LACMA rock.
Like a lot of kids (or maybe not), I had a fascination with rocks when I was younger. That said, I was rather nonplussed by the idea of LACMA spending $10 million to put a granite boulder on its lawn. Thinking perhaps I was too cynical, I headed to Figueroa St., where the rock was parked just north of Florence, to see what everyone else thought about it.
March 13, 2012
Go Frack Yourself: neighbors in Baldwin Hills turn out to talk fracking with Plains Exploration & Production and DOGGR
Last night, representatives from the Department of Conservation's Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR), Plains Exploration & Production (PXP), the oil company in charge of the Baldwin Hill Oil Field, and other officials went head to head with members of the Greater Baldwin Hills Alliance and a highly a skeptical community in a standing-room-only meeting at the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area Community Center.
March 9, 2012
Tour de Watts: Join us for an event to celebrate the launch of Streetsblog in South L.A.
Join us from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Watts to celebrate the launch of Streetsblog in South L.A.!
March 7, 2012
Parks: Sometimes They Take a While to Grow on You
SELLING SOUTH PARK ON their new park seems to be a slow process.
March 2, 2012
All Biked Up and Nowhere to Go: Four Boys in Florence-Firestone
FOUR BOYS WITH BIKES between the ages of 9 and 13 stand in a yard along Hooper St. in the Florence-Firestone neighborhood, looking warily at me as I pull up on my bike. Victor, a solid kid with a swipe of grease across his cheek, tightens his grip on a wrench as the others glance nervously at each other. Strangers tend not to show up in people's yards asking questions very often around here, and these kids are clearly not sure what to make of the situation.
March 1, 2012